Obstetrician receives the 2014 Skandia Lennart Levi Prize

The Skandia Lennart Levi Prize for health-promotive research has been awarded to Olof Stephansson, Associate Professor at the Department of Medicine, Clinical Epidemiology Unit at Karolinska Institutet.

Obstetrician Olof Stephansson specializes in perinatal epidemiology. In the last few years he has contributed to recent advances in areas such as maternal risk factors for adverse pregnancy and infant outcomes and in particular the role of chronic diseases and obesity in the mother and labor complications.

Of great importance to both his research and clinical work, Stephansson is chair of the Swedish Pregnancy Register, which focuses on quality in pregnancy, delivery and the newborn infant. The registry started in 2013 and is built up by prospectively recorded information in the computerized antenatal, obstetrical and neonatal records. The registry will be a great resource for future research within perinatal and pediatric epidemiology.

“Olof Stephansson has an impressive track record and his modesty and willingness to help colleagues and junior researchers makes him a worthy winner of this prize” says Professor Nancy Pedersen, chair of the award committee.

The Skandia Lennart Levi Prize for health-promotive research was established in 2010 and is to be awarded annually over a period of five-years. The candidates are to be internationally outstanding researchers active in Sweden or abroad. The recipients are selected by a panel comprised of professors from Karolinska Institutet. The prize is for SEK 100,000 and will be awarded at Karolinska Institutet’s installation ceremony on 17 October 2014.